Fifteen years ago, global leaders at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen described poverty eradication as an ethical, political and economic imperative, and identified it as one of the three pillars of social development. Poverty eradication has since become the overarching objective of development, as reflected in the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals which set the target of halving global extreme poverty by 2015.

Judging from statistics, there has been some success in reducing global poverty levels. According to the World Bank, the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day in developing countries declined from 1.9 billion to 1.4 billion between 1981 and 2005 at 2005 purchasing power parity. In addition, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 52.0 to 25.7 per cent during this period.

Improvements in overall poverty levels have largely depended on growth. Countries or regions that have experienced strong growth during the last two decades have managed to reduce poverty levels, particularly in urban areas. It is the success of China and East Asia, and to some extent India, that has largely driven global poverty trends downward. However, not every region or country has recorded such remarkable progress. The absolute number of people living in poverty has gone up in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Northern Africa, as well as in Central Asia.

Viewed in terms of the wider definition of poverty adopted by the 1995 Social Summit, which includes deprivation, social exclusion and lack of participation, the situation today may be even more deplorable than a money income poverty line would suggest.

The recent food and energy crises made hundreds of millions more vulnerable to hunger and poverty. Moreover, the current global financial and economic crisis threatens to wipe out much of the modest progress in poverty reduction achieved since the 2000 Millennium Summit, while climate change increasingly threatens the lives of people living in poverty. The negative economic and social impacts of these crises highlight vulnerability to poverty and call into question the sustainability of global poverty reduction. This further underscores the need to rethink poverty reduction strategies and, more broadly, the underlying development paradigm.

The Report on the World Social Situation 2010 seeks to contribute to rethinking poverty and its eradication. Following the review of global poverty trends contained in chapter II, chapters III and IV reflect on broader issues of measurement, with a view to widening the understanding of poverty in its various dimensions. They underscore the fact that the issue of poverty reduction is a great deal more nuanced and complex than the narrow technocratic vision underlying the conventional wisdom. Chapters V through VIII critically examine the conventional policy framework and popular poverty reduction programmes in the context of the persistence of poverty, rising inequality and lacklustre growth performance in many developing countries until very recently. Chapter IX argues that a commitment to eradicating poverty and to enhancing equity and social integration requires consistent actions directed towards sustainable economic growth, productive employment creation and social development, entailing an integrated approach to economic and social policies for the benefit of all citizens. Moreover, it calls for more developmentally oriented and progressive State activism and universalism – as opposed to selectivity – in this approach.